Thread by @DylanLineger

Saturday Storytime...

As some followers know, I represented public servants including at ODSP where my job was for over a decade. I started getting 'in the room' around the same time as the Poverty Reduction Act, 2009 came into force. That unit came to our meetings to brief...

The main point of the Act required a target and a metric. Then programs got tagged for how they help meet the target. Ontario had no target and the prior government had gutted services. The Act made some sense. Without a goal and metric it is hard to measure pass or fail.

In comes the Poverty Reduction team to brief. They are really excited, and nice. They do the PowerPoint then we got to ask questions. Standard stuff. I ask why isn't it the Poverty Elimination Strategy, genuinely not to throw shade. They say the Act is about targets & reporting.

Fair enough. So my next question was why the target was 25% and not 100%. How could the Liberal government justify saying their plan, at the greatest success level, was 75% of the people in poverty that day were supposed to be in poverty 5 years later. That got non-answers.

This meeting confirmed that legislated poverty was the plan. Luckily as a social justice union, OPSEU endorsement of #BasicIncome and disability rights gave me some leverage to keep pushing with but we also had 9,000 other battles and not nearly the resources of government.

Being in the room allowed some "why don't we..." In many areas there is a creativity deficit in public policy. Senior bureaucrats and Ministers may have little care or skills for their portfolio as politics often dictated appointments. As a rep you learn to wiggle in that vacuum.

As part of this Poverty Reduction Strategy the downloading of ODSP became intertwined. While the causes of poverty vary, it is a binary problem for a government. Government has the capacity, on any day of the week, to end poverty forever. If you had less than X, here's X. Easy.

This decision tree was the challenge. OPSEU and other allies we banded together to stop a download. There was clarity and lots of input. Humanity won over Minister McMeekin. We saw him change from the campaign. He rose at QP and killed the downloading. (Then Cabinet shuffled)

When "the people" get a Minister on side that was a death blow to a career. Same at the senior leader level in the bureaucracy. "If you care, you can't be trusted" was/is the unspoken rule. More points are scored attacking the public/unions/poor than showing compassion in policy.

At the same time this executive fear could be used to get some good done in a short time. The Basic Income Pilot had no warning. Even those of us pushing the idea were surprised. Because it was the will of government it happened. Wynne needed progress before the election.

Government doesn't do much. They direct the public service to implement and do the doing part. With no lead notice half the project timeline passed just hiring staff to design the pilot and taking inputs from stakeholders. Ontario implemented a #BasicIncome pilot in a short time.

The Basic Income Pilot was killed almost immediately after Premier Ford's government came in power. Even though it was a political ploy by Liberals, it worked. It worked better than even advocates suggested. Even I was saying to wait for stabilization before expecting results.

The decision to leave the public service was partly because the Basic Income Pilot was killed. My first recommendation at design phase was "don't make it a pilot." I expected a Conservatives to shelf helping poor but Ford axed it in the middle. He broke Ontario's promise.

Participants sued the government. When I found out I contacted legal. I was already phasing out my career there and initially asked so I didn't destroy documents that might be sought. The first response was... What? I pointed out that I consulted the ADM and others. Crickets.

Worth noting the Employer wrote me up breaching Employer policy with communication to my membership on non-government emails. Yet, somehow legal decided that despite doing work on government time with government resources, everything I had on Basic Income was mine or OPSEU's.

I was being a little pesky pointing out I had a bankers box of relevant information. Courts initially ruled against the four seeking remedy but recently the Ontario Court of Appeals certified the class action for Basic Income Pilot participants to proceed. A case to watch.

That is why I started this Storytime thread. The #BasicIncome Pilot case matters a lot. Not just to participants in the Pilot but all of us. This case could decide the obligations of governments or give government more power. We can improve the expectations with our ground game.